and there are many victories worse than a defeat
by BlackEyedGirl
Summary: He had forgotten the story. Hadn’t got into a fight in years. Had forgotten, as he imagined his genius little brother had too, that they were the kind of men who had walked down the street expecting to have to defend themselves. Toby, post Here Today


**Title:** and there are many victories worse than a defeat  
**Fandom:** The West Wing  
**Characters:** Toby and David  
**Rating:** PG  
**Genre:** Drama/Angst  
**Length:** 2,700 words  
**Disclaimer:** All belongs to Sorkin and Wells.  
**Spoilers:** Set a year after Drought Conditions, ie the spring after the Santos Inauguration  
**Summary:** "He had forgotten the story. Hadn't got into a fight, a real fight, in years. Had forgotten, as he imagined his genius little brother had too, that they were the kind of men who had walked down the street expecting to have to defend themselves."

**AN:** For **thecolourclear**, in **twwminis** who requested: _set AFTER Drought Conditions, and not all sad_ and did not want: _Toby crying, David in any way whatsoever annoying._

* * *

His jacket is not rent today; it is a good thick coat, of the type his father would approve. Wrapped tightly around him, although it is not cold - this is New York in near-springtime, close to the date his little brother entered the world, closer to the date he left it. Toby, typically he feels, came into the world in a bitter December. 

David's wife had chosen the day. They don't always wait a year for unveilings now; they won't for Toby's. But he understands why she had chosen this. She makes a solemn figure, pale and elegant, standing facing the headstone. Last year she hadn't been quite willing to forgive him either, for once the anger at the deceased not misplaced. They had given themselves a little longer, time for the wounds to heal a little, for the bitterness to fade into sadness. Toby wasn't sure it had been long enough.

He buried his fists in his pockets, hands clenched. They brushed a heavy roll of metal, wrapped in paper. Sometime in the weeks after David's death he'd started carrying pennies again. No, not sometime, it was after Josh. Not that he would need a roll of pennies to have an edge over Josh Lyman in a fight, but because he had forgotten the story. Hadn't got into a fight, a real fight, in years. Had forgotten, as he imagined his genius little brother had too, that they were the kind of men who had walked down the street expecting to have to defend themselves. David had died a respected scientist and astronaut, and Toby had been a force to be reckoned with in the Party. They were just two kids from Brooklyn who carried pennies, ready to hit back.

-

_David had been eight, nine in three weeks, and already excited about it. Fourth grade. Toby opened the door with his key. Ma had been out, and his sisters would still have been at high school. Toby's classes finished a little after David's, and he was expecting to have to deal with the manic energy that was his little brother after an hour on his own. David was sitting at the table, and when he looked up at his brother, Toby saw the split lip, the eyes red with tears. David flung himself at Toby, snuffling into his shirt, and Toby hadn't understood a word. Wouldn't have been able to anyway - the world had gone muffled and blurred, and he had not understood what 'red mist' meant before this moment. _

Hands shaking, he had gone to the ice-box and handed David a few cubes. David had popped one in his mouth like a piece of candy, and attempted to talk around it.

_Toby had balled his fists together that day, buried in his pockets so David wouldn't see. The first time he had felt ready to fight to protect someone, the first time there had been someone who had needed it. _

_He couldn't help though, not really. Toby could take a punch, and he could get one in on the way down, but there had been more of them than David, and what he could tell him to do? He could teach David lots of things, but fighting wasn't one of them. One in a long list of times he had cursed their father for being inconsiderate enough to leave without telling Toby what would be required of him. He had not been ready to be the man of this house, and the blood on David's lip was evidence of that._

_He didn't know who had told David about the pennies, but he came to Toby with a fistful of shining coins, asking to go to the bank. Toby had taken David's small hand and walked with him down the street. This part, he could do. _

_-_

David had always looked like the smart one. Toby fingers the glasses, lying in his coat pocket again. The child prodigy. Toby was the oldest boy – the longed-for son – but David had been their father's joy, their mother's comfort, the baby. Beloved in his own sake, not for God's goodness in granting him.

Ma had seen David take to the stars, but she had not known of Toby's success. She had never met Andy or the twins, but she had held David's kids in her arms and offered his wife her veil to wear down the aisle. She would have liked Bartlet, he thinks, and she would have adored her grandchildren. But in wishing this, he wishes that she had lived to bury her youngest child, and Toby knows enough of love now for this thought to chill him. She loved them both, even if she had sighed into his hair and wished he would smile more. Told him not to worry so much about his little brother, that David was happy, even if he couldn't spell inter-planetary. Toby hadn't been able to help the concern, be it ever so ill-expressed, because David back then had been all wide eyes, and hands tugging on his sleeve, as if the mysteries of the universe had been locked in Toby's eleven year old mind.

-

_David had turned his face to grin at Toby. "It's okay, mama, Toby helped." He hadn't thought to remember that, it was such a small moment. But one day Huck looked up at him, tongue between his teeth. "What's this word?" And David's trusting curiosity shone in his baby-son's eyes. You are the better parts of me. An improvement, on the second go-around. _

_- _

David's wife comes up to him. She touches his shoulder, nearer to his neck. "You look so like him," she whispers. CJ had said that once. He had never seen it (he had only ever seen his father) – David had been narrower of face, dark hair still, and no beard. When Toby had sat with his brother's body he had noticed the creeping threads of grey, the slight lines around his eyes. David would have looked like him one day, perhaps. They wouldn't know. But his brother's beautiful wife touched his neck like she was expecting her hand to wave through him. She kisses the side of his cheek - she has never done that before - and wishes him goodbye.

The kids trail after her, all of them with David's eyes and hair and that look which reminds Toby of guilt even now. Even when he was not to blame for the hurt; the feeling that he had failed somewhere. What kind of brother was he that he had not known, that he had not taught him better than that? (That he was angry, even now. That he blamed David for what had happened next, though it had started long before. That he had failed David years before David had failed him.)

-

_"Toby," David had whispered, and even his voice was like Pa's.  
_

_"You landed okay?"_

_"Yeah, Toby, we're down. Hanna told me you were worried."_

_"You were in a broken shuttle, David, of course I was worried."_

_"I didn't think you even knew I was up there."_

_"Yeah, well…" he trailed off._

_"Is he okay, your friend, Joshua?"_

_"Josh. No, he's not. He's in surgery, David. He's not okay."_

_"Toby…?"_

_"Yeah," his voice had broken._

_"Don't worry," his brother had reassured him. Three years younger wasn't so much on days like this. "He's strong, you're always telling me how he drives you nuts with his fight, Toby. He'll fight."_

_"I've… I've got to go, David. They're calling us back."_

_"Go on," David answered without protest. "Tell him you were worried about him. And that he's in all of our prayers. So much fight, Toby. He'll be fine."_

_- _

A year ago Toby had fought with Josh, and stopped fighting with the President. The battle had not been worth it anymore, not when he could take his fight somewhere else, somewhere that it would matter.

The President sees it a self-destruction, a crash-and-burn. The others, Toby knows, had blamed it on David. Leo, he suspects, would have taken back his assertion that Toby still had fight left in him – this was giving in, letting the place swallow him whole. Toby knows better – this was the fight he had left in him, a last stand worth making.

-

_He had sat with David's body. Guarding it as he had not been able to in life. His brother had deserved a better keeper. He should have heard the tone of defeat, he was a writer, the nuance should not have been lost to him. Because it hadn't, after all, been defeat. The last conversation - the one that began with 'Toby' and ended with 'Goodbye' – he had been steeling himself to do it even then. David had looked out at the ocean and not been willing to push. The question Toby had asked, with a different answer, or the same answer taken further than Toby had meant it. There had been control in this, leaving his wife and kids to deal with the consequences. David had looked peaceful, gone somewhere where his failed fight with mortality no longer troubled him._

-

He places the stone on David's headstone. Reflection of permanence, protection from forgetting. Beloved Husband, Loving Father, Devoted Son and Brother. A sign that people were here, that you were not alone, even in death. An acknowledgement, he thinks, that though he did not forgive, perhaps he is starting to understand. Toby has left his own wife and children behind in Maryland, angry at him for leaving. He has been fighting un-winnable battles all his life, but then he was always the awkward one. He left his battles in Washington too, his chance to shape the party alongside Josh and Sam. But Toby would never have turned to Matt Santos the way he had to Jed Bartlet; his graceless exit might have been later, but it would have meant nothing - he would have ended up in the same place. David had known he could not win this fight, but he got in his swing on the way down. When you're destined for a crash and burn, the only choice left is how you are willing to fall. Toby had the dizzying feeling of tumbling forwards, as if this had been a path they had been stuck on from that moment Pa was dragged away in handcuffs. David had sat in a garage with the exhaust running, looked death in the face and went on his own terms. Toby still hated him for that. But he had sat in a quiet office and picked up his phone to call Greg Brock, knowing the consequences, knowing he was courting damnation, knowing this was betrayal. Knowing that if he chose this fall, there would be no getting back up again. David had always been more like him than he had wanted to admit.

-

_January 28th 1986. David had phoned him, preemptively, he had thought. _

_"Is it worth it?" Toby had asked, before David got a word in._

_"Toby," David reprimanded. "People died today."_

_"And you want to…"_

_"Yes, Toby, it would have been worth it. These are the things worth dying for."_

_"They didn't… they didn't get anywhere, David. They left family back here."_

_David had sighed, knowing and still so young. "Yes, Toby, it's a tragedy. A tragedy for humanity, and for us who want to go, even now. These were our brothers. Who wanted to see what's out there, what we are capable of. The mysteries of the universe are out there, Toby, and we can't be afraid to reach for them. If we give up that…"_

_"I… I pay more attention to these things now, you know that."_

_"Thank you," David answered, as if it had been a profession of the love Toby will not voice to him. "It's not going to happen," he said. "It's so rare. They'll fix it."_

_"And if they don't?"_

_"They will." Sam's voice echoes in his remembrance of David's, or David's voice in Sam's. We reach for the stars. Full measures of devotion. Big-brotherly connections. "These are the risks worth taking," David had whispered, as if it was sacred. "What fear can we have in death, knowing why it is that we go? We have our own battles, you and I. You fight the good fight, just like me. It's worth it, or why else…?"_

_"Okay, okay," he had muttered. "Just stay safe?"_

_"I'll do my best. You too, Toby." _

_-_

After some consideration he digs through his pockets. Toby places a penny underneath the stone he had put there. David's wife will look at it later, confused, but he knows that David will understand. Giving the headstone one last look, he walks away. David had given up, he had stopped fighting, and Toby could not have changed this, could not have fought for him. He could not save David, but he made sure the President could not abandon those young men, so like his brother, trapped in a broken ship.

-

_"Hey, kid."_

_"Toby?"_

_"Is this a bad time?"_

_"No, Toby, of course not. I'm just…"_

_"Yeah. I was thinking of you today."_

_"That so?"_

_"I tried to do something that didn't work."_

_"And this reminded you of me?" David laughed on the other end of the line. "Did you try to grow mould in the President's sink? Or was it goldfish in his good glassware?"_

_"I wanted to appoint someone who would make the President have to talk about school prayer. And I thought of that…"_

_"I remember, Toby. You were so good that day."_

_"I didn't do anything. It was Pa, wasn't it, who told you about the pennies? I couldn't do anything."_

_"You were my brother, Toby, you helped."_

_"They still…"_

_"Yes, but every time I thought: 'my brother has told me what you are. Little cowards. And unconstitutional at that.' I wonder, now, if unconstitutional wasn't a terribly long word to teach your eight year old brother. But it worked."_

_"How did that possibly…?"_

_"This book you showed me, this constitution, that you loved. That you would read like it was the Torah. You gave it to me, remember? You said that it was worth losing, that we were warriors in this thing's defense. Pa showed me was how to do some damage in the fight, but you... I'm sure, Toby, that you'll win your fight eventually. Already it's better, isn't it? Because of kids like us, who grew up into men like you and get to take these things to the President."_

_"I won't see this thing's end."_

_"Of course not. But we joined the fray, Toby. We fought, and we lost our little battles, of course we did. But they'll remember that we fought. We didn't just fall, Toby, we didn't just let them take us down. Knowing that we would lose, we chose to get a good punch in anyway. What more could anyone ask?"_

_"I wasn't sure you would remember."_

_"You're my brother, Toby. I remember everything you ever tried to teach me. Even if I disagreed, sometimes." David's laughter was a tease, soft little-boy chuckle lingering underneath the deep older tones. "For example, I'm still not convinced that the Yankees are the greatest sporting team around." _

_-_

If he makes the history books, it will not be for his Inaugural Addresses, for the State of the Unions that he had been lauded for. It would be this one last act, treason or heroism, but nothing to do with his talent. Instead he would be remembered for what must seem to most people an act of madness, of passion or stupidity. He did not give them David's name. What can be excused in a politician, in a man who had attended peace rallies on his sister's shoulders, would not be forgiven in an American hero. His brother who was not like Toby, who walked straight-backed into the shuttle he had known he might never come down from, who held science as his idol, who would not have given up their secrets. Toby is content to take the blame - this is not the legacy he wished for, but he had chosen it, and there are worse things. He thinks David would have forgiven him eventually, would have understood that they had always been fighting different battles. That they had been closer in their failures than they had ever been in success; it seems fitting that this last odd kinship should be so close to their first.

Silently, to himself and never to be voiced, he dedicates this last fight to his little brother.

_

* * *

_FIN 


End file.
